1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tape printing device, and more particularly to a tape printing device having a mode in which the tape printing device automatically prints strings comprising capital alphabets, numerals or symbols in maximum size within the width of the tape print medium.
2. Description of Related Art
Various proposals have been made concerning a tape printing device for printing desired strings on a tape medium of fixed width (e.g. 10 mm or 24 mm). The applicant of present invention has proposed a tape printing device in U.S. Pat. No. 5,066,152 for printing characters and symbols with a thermal head on a print medium after an operator selects letters to be printed by operating a rotatable letter selection dial, and the printed medium formed in the process can be secured to a desired place on an object such as a file.
A tape printing device of this category normally stores dot patterns for characters with accent symbols, capital alphabets, small alphabets or numerals on a character generator ROM. In the above construction, the dot pattern for the characters correspond to the size of letters decided by the Base Line (BL), Top Alignment (TA) and Bottom Alignment (BA) so that the characters are printed within the print allowance area D2 as shown in FIG. 8 of the preferred embodiment of present invention.
Accordingly, when the tape printing device prints characters, especially capital alphabets or numerals, on a tape print medium 5, the tape printing device often leaves a gap G between Base Line BL and Bottom Alignment BA.
Since capital alphabets and numerals of any character size are printed on the print medium with a gap left between Base Line BL and Bottom Alignment BA, the characters and numerals are printed in the print allowance area with the gap. In this way, the characters are printed in a smaller size and the printing device fails to make full use of the print allowance area, despite the capacity of the tape printing device to print characters in the largest size.